Thursday, April 8, 2010

Reptilicus (1961)

As a fan of monster movies you learn to accept a lot. But I can say, with out being especially sad or ashamed, that Reptilicus is one of the more boring monster movies out there. At least the first fifty minutes, which is sloooooow and filled with not so funny scene with famous Danish comedian Dirch Passer. But after that first monster attack it picks up in speed and delivers some very cheap action-sequences. The puppet and miniatures are to small to even remotely be effective and it's badly edited with footage of soldiers shooting in random directions.

BUT Reptilicus also has one of the most stunning stunt scenes I've seen in a Scandinavian movie, and I'm surprised that reviewers never bring this scene up. What we have here is a lot of people in panic, running to a bridge. The foreman at the bridge is getting nervous, maybe because the monster is behind them, and starts to open the bridge - and people can't stop because of the pressure behind them (yes, just like that scene in Roland Emmerich 2012, but this one is a lot more effective). It's an amazing scene, and I have no idea how they got those Danish daredevils to go ahead and do this! Maybe a lot of beer? It don't seem to have done at all with visual effects or cutting around to a lower bridge. What you see is what you get.

Anyway, here's some screenshot of the best sequence in Reptilicus, and it still impresses me:





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks interesting! But is it better than Warlords of Atlantis? Cause thats a killer movie.

xanthor fek said...

me and my friends saw this in a movie theatre and we loved it! of course we were 10 years old at the time. great memories, though I don't think I'd want to revisit it.